I just finished listening to Wolf: The Lives of Jack London by James L. Haley on my commute. I had known nothing about London except that he was pretty outdoorsy. Turns out he was an ardent and outspoken socialist, too. He had grown up amidst the unspeakable hardships of the lower class in San Francisco, taking on ever greater risks to eke out a living among sailors and, in Alaska, prospectors. Driven by a sense of justice, he went so far as to live and work for a spell in London’s East End, workhouses and all, in order to get the first person view of the lower classes there. He lived hard and drank hard, declining already in his thirties and ultimately succumbing to a self-administered morphine overdose. The description of working class San Francisco in the 19th century alone would have made the book worthwhile.

He was an improbable literary giant, but a giant nonetheless - and if you don’t think so, brush aside your White Fang and read the concluding chapters of Jack Barleycorn. With fierce dedication - writing 1000 words a day whatever the circumstances through most of his professional life - and constant, ambitious reading, London developed the style we savor in these better known works of fiction. But he also was a journalist of the heroic variety taking his place next to Orwell, who descended the hellish coal mines of England to bring their appalling circumstances to light (“Down the Mine”, 1937), and Hitchens, who voluntarily underwent waterboarding to report on its ethical standing. London’s stint in the East End became People of the Abyss; his time living among the disaffected train hoppers across the US produced The Road. He literally walked into the fire in the wake of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to capture the scene where “[all] the shrewd contrivances and safeguards of man had been thrown out of gear by thirty seconds’ twitching of the earth-crust.”

Was he in ways a fascist, as Orwell suggested? Now there's an interesting question, but one I'll put off to another time...